What's the best way to update my wife's new computer?

[conejo]

My wife has a 5-year old macbook pro, just ordered her a new one, arrives next week. I just did a full superduper backup to an external USB drive for her then am upgrading to High Sierra right now, then after a few days of it behaving properly I'll do another smart update on SuperDuper.

Once we get the new laptop, what's the cleanest way to get her data onto the new machine? She's had some odd issues with that machine, particularly with the Mail app. I want to bring her data and files over but change as little on the new machine as possible. What's the best practice now for this in High Sierra?

[dnanian]

When prompted during first boot of a clean install of High Sierra, point at the backup. That'll bring in the applications and data. That's what I'd do.

[conejo]

Dave, so to be clear, the first time I boot up her new laptop, I'm assuming I should have nothing connected, just launch, do any updates to get to the most current version of High Sierra, get connected to wifi, etc... Then once that's all in place, reboot when her new laptop is connected via USB to the external backup? And then do what?

or should I be connected via USB to the external backup on the initial launch of the new laptop and when it asks if we want to bring over data files and settings, point to that image file?

[dnanian]

No, at first boot, it'll prompt to restore, and then you're restore - not from a file, but from a direct-to-a-drive backup (or the original Mac). DO NOT wait until you've created an account.

You can't do this from an image file. It has to be from a real drive...

[conejo]

ok, my bad, I used wrong terminology.

So I'll have a fully bootable cloned backup of my wife's original laptop to a partition on an external usb drive. The first time I launch the new laptop, I have that external drive connected to the new laptop and when it asks if I want to restore, I select her partition and let the magic commence.

Is that right?

[dnanian]

That's right.

[conejo]

thanks Dave, much appreciated.